October 9, 2015

Category: News

Author: Charles

Someday this gamedev is gonna end

It has been a while since I last updated everyone on Concealed Intent’s progress. This is not because little has been happening – quite the opposite! I have been working so much almost everything else has fallen away – most notably exercise and keeping up with people. In the last week I’ve left the house twice, both times just to buy food. It is crunch time on the project, but since this is a one-person project, I’m doing it to myself and have no one else to blame. However, today a major goal was “finished” (in quotes as it is never really finished), so I have a little downtime. Partly this is because Unity has said they may release fix for a bug that has plagued me the last fortnight, and I decided to wait a little for it before releasing the latest build. There is a workaround for the bug, but that has its own issues. So here’s hoping that they do fix it and soon!

Since the start of September more online functionality, a soundtrack, a modular narrative system, random skirmish generation, a splash screen and various bug fixes have been added to the game. However, the biggest change is to the controls, GUI and tutorial. By mid September, I was feeling quite confident in the quality of Concealed Intent and began planning to put it on Steam. First there was to be the final playtests. Unfortunately, those playtests did not go well. The general view was that it was hard to tell what was going on in the tute, the game broke certain conventions and there was just too much clicking. Oh well. I was in quite the funk for a few days afterwards, wondering if the game was a failure. Recovery came through talking to a couple of local gamedevs (thanks guys!) and now the GUI has greatly changed – movement and targeting can be done with a single click, sub panels (noise, components & log) have been removed, the tutorial completely rewritten and a selection indicator added.

Now once again I think the game is ready for Steam Early Access. If its not, I’ll probably just release it anyway because I can’t keep working on this game forever. It must end soon. There is the “workaround” version on dropbox now (available here). hopefully to be replaced with the fixed version soon. Then it is time to put this version out for comments. Then I’ll work to get a private beta on Steam (sending keys to all those that have helped along the way), while at the same time improving my (nearly non-existent) marketing materials – including this website.